14 DAY TRIAL // After finding Livingstone in 1871, Henry Morton Stanley continued his exploration of the Congo basin and tried to convince the British government to turn Congo into a British colony. This, however, proved not interested, and Belgian king was eventually faster. Leopold II turned the river's banks into a huge graveyard for 5 million victims. The genocide perpetrator with a white beard and looking like Santa Claus was a kind of precursor to Hitler and Stalin...
Through various tricks, Stanley bought terrains from the tribes inhabiting the river's banks and got the approval of the western powers to colonize the area under the pretext of fighting the Arab slave traders. Leopold was the only shareholder of an array of puppet societies masking the barbarity under an altruist cover.
The Free State of Congo was his ranch. He bought Congo on a private title because the Belgian government did not want colonies.
Punishments like hand cutting were something common; displacements and executions, too. Slavery also was common. Rubber quotas were imposed on the villages and if they were not delivered, the villages would be wiped out. At a given moment, the hand cutters did not even reclaim the rubber and made their sinister harvesting by thousands just to justify themselves before their bosses. The case of Leon Rohm, a military at the service of Leopold, who had his garden surrounded by piles with cut heads, was described by Joseph Conrad in his novel "The Heart of the Darkness".
The atrocities were denounced by the English and the European powers took Congo from Leopold, but in 1908 the Belgian parliament annexed the colony. For 50 years, the Belgian Congo was one of the worst administered colonies. In 1960, Belgium conceded independence to Congo with such a haste, that there was little time to organize elections. Coups, murder and depletion of the natural resources are still to be encountered on its banks.
The disorganized decolonization of Congo allowed Mobutu Sese Seko to take power in a coup from 1964 to 1997, leading the country with an iron hand. Some considered him a too cruel, kleptocratic dictator; others praised the country's relative stability and peace throughout most of his rule, but also his role of an ally of the west during the cold war. In a country with over 200 tribes, Mobutu kept order and averted civil war.
The war of coltan that started in 1998 produced a frightening human catastrophe and widespread hunger, with 4.5 million victims (out of an overall population of 51) only till 2003, by bullet, machete, spear, hunger or disease, and other 2.5 millions of refugees, of which 350,000 to neighboring countries.
Coltan is a strategic mineral for the novel technologies. Each mobile phone needs a pinch of this magic black powder to function. Missiles, airbags, videogames have coltan in their microprocessors. The scarcity of this mineral forced a delay by two years in the launch of the Play Station 2.
Congo harbors the biggest world reserves. The coltan, a mix of niobite and tantalite, is also found in 6 other African countries. Children work in the coltan mines (only they can reach the narrowest galleries) and also Hutu prisoners and adults. They all must face semi-slavery conditions. On the ground, women cook and prostitute. The benefits from the coltran smuggling are directed to financing armies and guerilla forces of the confronting countries.
Congo also harbors 70 % of the world's cobalt reserves, 30 % of diamonds, and 10 % of copper.
Seven foreign armies were attracted in the civil war by the treasures of a country as big as Western Europe, the third in Africa. On one side, there is the Republic of Congo, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe; on the other side Rwanda, Uganda and the Congolese rebels, in a conflict qualified by some as "the First African World War".
The war had started in fact much before 1998, when, after the Rwandan genocide of April 1994, the new government coming from the Tutsi guerilla chased the former Hutu army inside Congo.
Together with the Rwandans were also Ugandan soldiers, supported by the US, which saw in this a good opportunity to counteract the Francophone influence in Congo and the Great African Lakes region and to remove Mobutu.
Laurent Desire Kabila, an ex guerrilla fighter, managed to make the government in Kinshasa. But after the capital's taking, followed the fights for the territory and riches' control and this is how 6 countries were involved in this war. Even if there are 5,500 international blue helmets in Congo, they cannot defend the civilians or impede a fight, their role being just to inform.
Reports counted about warlords like colonel Freddy, dubbed "Wipe Out Everything" which entered localities with the troops and gave them 24 hours to gather their "payment". All the houses were totally pillaged, the soldiers taking to the last blanket, pot or bike. Those who opposed were beaten or killed, and all the young girls and women captured were systematically raped.
In 1999, in the region of Ituri (northeast Congo), rich in gold mines, diamonds, timber and coltran, started a conflict between the tribes of the Lendu and Hema, enemies for centuries, reaching genocide size, fueled by the help of the foreign armies that delivered weapons. The Ugandans were on the part of the Hemas. The economical issues, too, were clear.
Hemas are traditionally shepherds or traders, and are considered healthier than the neighboring tribes. The UPC (Union of the Patriotic Congolese) was first armed by the Ugandan army and led by Thomas Lubanga. Hemas are ethnically close to the Tutsi of Rwanda, and found an ally in the Rwandan government, too.
Lendus are sedentary farmers of Bantu roots that compete with Hemas for land. They are allies of the Kinshasa government and are ethnically close to Hutu of Rwanda. Many Hutus are now refugees in Ituri, after the 1994 Rwandan massacre, when they killed 800,000 Tutsis.
In 2002, a group from the tribe Ngitis assaulted Kamanda, a small commercial town on the road to Kisangani and killed the Hemas for two days. Some of the warriors exposed on their necklaces mutilated parts of their victims, and also walked through the town with impaled heads of their victims on their spears.
Following the Ngitis attack, the Ugandan army arrived with the armored cars, accompanied by Hema militias seeking for revenge. Even if the Ngitis had fled to the forest, they sought systematically the Lendus inside the population and killed them. Many were burned alive inside their houses. The victims had the neck cut off and mutilated extremities.
The conflict between the Hemas and Lendus has produced 100,000 refugees only from Bunia, the capital of the Ituri region. In the refugee camps lack drugs, food and drinkable water.
Lendu soldiers even committed acts of cannibalism against the pygmies of the rainforest. The Lendu superstition says that the pygmy viscera transmits magic powers, invulnerability and courage to the consumer.
"When returning from hunting, my husband saw the soldiers quartering my mother, my brother, my sister and two children. They put them on the fire and ate them. What took with them the left overs", counted a pygmy woman to a UN team.
During the war years, the pygmies entered deeper into the forest, but they never abandoned it. Now, they got out of the forest, extremely frightened by the cannibalism stories and joined the waves of refugees, having to survive as refugees in a hostile environment. About 3,000 of them have fled to neighboring countries.
Weakly adapted to the sunlight and food offered in the refugee camps (they still transport lighted fire when they displace and never eat raw food, including bananas and forest fruits, always roasted), many died of diseases.
In the conflicts also died UN soldiers, priests and seminarians. In one attack on the Nyakasanza parish, two priests and 498 persons were killed. Missionaries' schools and hospitals, too, were not forgiven.
The Congolese war has turned into a generalized vandalism. There are groups of mercenaries led by warlords that function like anonymous societies, which offer their services to those who pay more, changing constantly side. The fight for territory, the ceaseless revenges and the interests for controlling the richest zone means continuous conflict reasons. Many of these soldiers are just boys or former boy soldiers.
The armies defend the interests of the local traders and neighboring countries, for maintaining the control over the areas rich in diamonds, gold, oil and coltran, so that they can export the riches without any legal problem or paying any tax, except the bribe money.
29 western companies and 54 persons, besides the conflict involving African governments, are accused of dealing with the Congolese coltran, most of them Belgian. Not so many changes from the times of Leopold II!...Charters supply the developed world with the precious mineral.
The modus operandi of the armies is simple: when they are in a better state than their opponents, they attack a region. The defending army retreats and the attackers provoke terror in the population. The payment of the soldiers: what they can recover in the first 24 hours from pillaging the houses and stealing the people. Rape is also part of the booty.
Women and young girls (many after seeing their husbands and fathers killed) are kidnapped and obliged to travel with the army as sexual slaves, and food, ammunition and weaponry carriers. During the long marches, they barely receive food, and during the night they sleep in a guarded area where groups of soldiers arrive and repeatedly rape them. Only during the chaos triggered by a combat some women manage to escape.
Boys too are kidnapped and put to fight as soldiers. In fact, 60 % of the fighters are under 15. Orphans, with no school to attend, have as the only solution the Kalashnikov, a light and deadly weapon in their hands. In other African conflicts, like in Sierra Leone, many children remained mutilated after rebel soldiers cut off their hands or feet, even of two-month-old babies.
During the attacks against the civilian population, families can flee into the rainforest to hide from the soldiers, sometimes for 1-2 months. This can be lethal for many, especially for the children. The only food available in the forest are roots and hunt, but as the families have to move continuously, they have no time for planting crops, and eat the food they are accustomed to.
Thousands of children hidden in the forest have experienced severe malnutrition and underfeeding, like "kwashiorkor", a skin depigmentation accompanying retarded growth, potbelly and anemia because of the severe lack of proteins, vitamins and dehydration, like in a third degree burning. This occurred in Kongolo, caused by combats for the control of the gold mines, between the Mai-Mai militias and Hutu soldiers against the soldiers of the Goma government, pro-Rwandan.
Soldiers consume alcohol and bangui, a psychoactive grass, for removing the fear and hunger. They kill the elephants for their ivory and the mountain gorilla has been almost wiped out (see latest events). About 350,000 square km (the size of Germany) of rainforest have been cut.
Like in many other African conflicts, the Congolese war causes almost no deaths among the fighting troops, but it's a catastrophe for the civilian population, both because of the atrocities and the ruin of the agriculture, roads, communications, schools and hospitals. In a country so rich in resources like Congo is, the income per capita is of $ 263, and the average lifespan of 49 years.